inspirational

Irritating Teachers

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If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito
~The Dalai Lama~

It seems mosquitos are very effective teachers.
To some they teach tolerance and non violence.
They test your patience as they make their presence known.
They draw you into the present and make you pay attention.
Me? With me they bring out my deepest, darkest killer instinct. My inner Dexter.
At three in the morning, when I hear that high pitched whining in my ear,
I Want. Them. Dead.
So much for non violence.
And I’m the girl that carries spiders outside.
I’m a card carrying pacifist until the mosquito shows me otherwise.

Just when you’re certain of your enlightened state. At the moment you know who you are and what you stand for, you can leave it to one of God’s tiniest creatures to bitch slap you back to reality. Or leave crazy, itchy, welts on your ass.
She has a wicked sense of humor.
If THAT doesn’t get you off your high horse….

So……I’m a pacifist unless pushed. Good to know.
Can you be a conditional pacifist? What IS my breaking point?
Those are important questions that can lead to self discovery……..or not.

Here’s what I know for sure.
I know I can snap if my sleep is interrupted.
I have been known to scream obscenities at ignorant drivers.

Then there’s the little dog. The puppy. The boxer-shark puppy.
IT has been sent by God to torment; I mean test me.
I have swatted the puppy on the rump for numerous infractions. Not hard, don’t go all PETA on me. It’s a swat to get her to pay attention to my stern face. She has made a mockery of my stern face. My stern face is a joke to her. The older dog cowers, she points and laughs.
Forget about NO. NO has become useless. To her, it means HI and SURE. She thinks it’s her name. It is yelled so frequently it has lost all of its bite. 
Talking about bite; that one tests my patience with her incessant biting.
She bites when she’s playing. She bites when she’s tired. She bites to make a point. She bites AIR. 
She bites the older dog on her Achilles. Little bitch. I scold her. I forcefully push her away. I “time out” her. When all I really want to do is bite her back.
She wields an unbelievable amount of power in our house. She is small, but her presence is mighty. She is my teacher. She makes me question my parenting skills AND my pacifist membership.

OMMMMM…………Back to a loving place………..Between the Mosquitos and the boxer-shark puppy, I have some serious spiritual work to do.

Who or what is your trigger? I’d love to hear who tests your patience, tolerance and all around spiritual practice. Tell me about it in the comments.

Xox

Nope, I Don’t Have Time!

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Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.
—Chinese Proverb
Excerpt From: Dr. Habib Sadeghi. “Within.” 

Nope, I don’t have time.
How may times have we all said that? We’re stressed out, trying to eek out fifteen minutes here, an hour there, to get things done.
But, if you’re REALLY honest with yourself, it’s not the truth.
Even worse yet, it can be a self sabotaging belief. A bullshit tape that runs on an endless loop. 24/7.

When I say I don’t have the time for something, what I’m really saying is:
It’s not interesting enough.
It doesn’t sound fun.
It won’t be productive.
What’s in it for me?
I have something better to do.
And the Hall of Famer: It’s just not a priority right now.
Because truth be told, we WILL find the time for the things we want to do.

I seem to find time for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I can loose hours to those three punks. I spend maybe ten minutes promoting the blog, and then I get sucked into their devious vortex for an hour of mindless trolling. Kim Kardashian did what!?
You know you do too.
What did we do before social media? It didn’t even exist in its present, obsessive form five years ago. And I still felt a time crunch.

We are all very discerning about what takes us away from the things we love to do.
Like spending time with family.
I was in a cafe the other day and observed a family of four. Sitting around the table, looking down at their phones. ALL of them. No conversation. No interaction. No connection. Not a good use of their time together.

I can lie and convince myself that I don’t have time for a workout and then talk to my sister for an hour or get lost in emails. When I tell that lie, my pants should catch on fire. At least running from the flames would burn some calories.
Pun intended.

I know, it seems like our 24 hour days are really about 18 hours. Unless you’re waiting to leave for a vacation. That day is 100 hours long…….So it’s all perception.

If you feel like you don’t have enough time, that is “lack” mentality. Lack mentality can permeate other areas of your life if you feel it and say it enough.
Case in point.
My husband is a designer/contractor. He is also an amazing manifestor. There’s just one catch. 
The first quarter of this year started slow. He had little stuff going, but nothing big lined up. So he asked the Universe, the Big Boss, for more jobs. Lo and behold, people started calling and emailing like crazy. He had ten proposals to do in two weeks. He started to feel the time crunch. He started to worry about having enough hours to meet with the clients, bid the jobs and write the proposals. All of those things are very time consuming. What if he got them all, then what? How was he going to be able to effectively run all those jobs at the same time? A bit of panic set in. It was very interesting to watch.
He no longer felt the lack of work, but he did feel the lack of time to get things done.
And you know what happened? Nothing. Everything stalled.

Partly from the freaking crazy energy lately, but mostly because:
You can’t ask the Universe for more, and then tell it you don’t have the time.
She hates mixed messages. They piss her off. So, she just stands in the corner, arms crossed, taping her foot impatiently and muttering under her breath: “Ya wanna be busy or ya wanna be a cry baby? Don’t over target, be realistic about what ya can accomplish in one day. I’m here, let me know when you’re ready.”

We have to be vigilant and clean up our energy, our perception and the things we say about time.
He’s working on that now. It’ll all work out. It always does.

To quote the brilliant Marie Forleo: It’s all figuraoutable.
So instead of saying we don’t have the time, let’s say instead: Let me take a look at my schedule, and see what I can figure out. The Universe likes to hear that. She may even take notice, unfold her arms and start to send great things your way.

I want to know, do you struggle with a “lack” mentality? If you’re honest, are there things that waste the precious little time you DO have? Do you agree that it’s all perception? I’d love to hear what YOU think.

Xox

Who Are You When No One Is Watching?

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I watched several people walk right by it. I did too. Twice.
Obviously some trash had found its way onto the path and into the planters in front of the door to the Y.

It looked like as if it had made a break for it on the way to the dumpster that lived around the side of the building. It was a few pieces of shredded paper, a power bar wrapper and parts of a banana peel. As I walked around it on my way in, I thought: Gee, someone needs to pick that up.
I’m sure the guy in the way too tight and shiny bike shorts, holding the door for me, thought the same thing.
After my 45 mins of extremely rigorous and effective circuit training (15 mins on the elliptical, 15 mins on the arm machines and 15 mins talking to Tina at the front desk)
I sprinted (walked slowly), with Bruno Mars still blaring in my ears, to my car.
When I saw that the trash was still by the doorway, I was annoyed, Jeez, that’s still there? I’d better go tell Tina to send someone to pick it up. And I walked right by.

What.  an.  assbite.

The sheer audacity of my own entitled ass-bite-ish-ness stopped me in my tracks.I looked around. Someone WAS sent to pick up the trash. Me.

I bent down, made sure I got all the pieces, walked back inside and threw it in the can that was next to the door. With my own, two, manicured hands. It took me less than a minute. Probably less than 30 seconds.
Sometimes I just shake my head in amazement…at my own behavior.

Who are we, when no one is watching? Are we assbites that walk by trash, or people in need? Do we turn our heads or pretend we’re on the phone?
Or are we people with some character? I think we can be both.

Back in the day, right after I bought my house, I LIVED at the 24 hour Hollywood Home Depot. I would walk down EVERY aisle like it was a gourmet market. Even the lumber department. It was dependable, free entertainment, in the fact that it was consistently crowded with a cross-section  of the most unique examples of humanity on the planet. It was the bar scene from Star Wars. AND, they played KROQ, an alternative rock radio station on the store PA after 6pm.
One night (It seemed I always needed a plunger or a dimmer switch at 11pm) in the aisle between electrical supplies and sprockets, was a sharp something or other that hadn’t been put back properly. As I absent mindedly strolled by, rocking out to The Clash, it jumped out and sliced my leg. Bad. Blood was suddenly EVERWHERE. It started to resemble a crime scene and as I looked around for help…crickets. There had easily been ten people on that aisle seconds before, and now it was deserted. Not a single soul.
People freak when they see blood. And a girl in denim overall shorts and Doc Martins hopping on one leg, yelling “OWWWWWWEEEEE” loudly.
They don’t want to get involved.
I’ll never understand that. When you see someone fall, find a crying, lost child, or stumble upon a bleeding new homeowner –– see if you can help.
Be a person of some character. Even if no one else is watching.

Someone must have hunted down an employee, because a guy that looked like my brother, if my brother was COVERED in tattoos and wearing a Home Depot shirt, came to my rescue.
He quickly wrangled the guilty object that cut me, back into its cubby, tied a bandana around my ankle and told me to go get stitches. In that order. He also alerted me to the fact that I roamed those aisles “at my own risk.”

Regardless, he was kind as he smiled and helped me back up on my feet.
Just then, my hero appeared. I heard angels singing.
He showed up with one of those flatbed wheelie things, and asked if I needed transport to my car. How chivalrous.
See…now this guy had some character.
Problem was, he resembled a biker/vampire, and I was sure the smell of my blood had beckoned him to my side. I declined his kind offer, and hobbled alone in the dark to my car, looking over my shoulder for a bat or my very pale, thirsty, knight in shining armor.

With all the cameras everywhere and YouTube video postings, we will all eventually  get caught in the act. But we have a choice. Will it capture us in a random act of helping or hiding? 

Tell me, are you the person that springs to action when someone falls or drops trash? Or have you caught yourself not wanting to get involved? Also, has something happened to you, and no one helped out? I’d love to hear about it?

 

Carry on, 

Xox

Saving Our Lives For Later?

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Saving Our Lives For Later?

One of the tragedies I would encounter on a regular basis as an Estate Jeweler was looking at gorgeous, incredibly made jewelry………that was seldom or NEVER worn.
The nervous relative would be standing in front of me, anxious for an appraisal and dollar value of their Great Aunt Barbara’s treasures. I would carefully open old, leather, fitted boxes, revealing that hint of her Shalimar.
Inside, I would find a stunning Art Deco diamond bracelet, carefully wrapped in Kleenex. Or strands of vintage pearls, still in their original black cloth pearl folders. Splendid Victorian era, carved hard stone rings, Georgian mine cut diamond earrings, all meticulously cared for, wrapped up and stored away. 
It’s easy to tell if a piece has been worn a lot. It has all the tell tale scratches, the worn clasp, the abraded stones that go along with being “well loved” as we so delicately put it. Unfortunately, much of the jewelry that relatives walked in with, had been locked up in safes or safe deposit boxes. Aunt Barbara had tucked it away for a special occasion. From the looks of most of them, that occasion had never come.

Unfortunately, I do that too. Don’t you?
Why do we do that? It’s really so sad. Why are we saving our lives for later?
Did we get it from our parents?
Some of them lived with all the furniture covered in plastic. The sofa frame would wear out before the fabric. That’s crazy.
We had a living room that may as well have had red ropes around it. Or caution tape. We were not allowed past the perimeter. A whole room in the home of a family of five, that was off limits.
What a luxury. What a waste. What the hell.

I recently found a beautiful dress in the dark recesses of my closet. I have worn it maybe twice. There it was, hiding in its garment bag, waiting to be shown off again. Trouble is, I’ve waited too long. It’s slightly out of style, meaning it’s too young for me now, and it’s become too small. Shit. I hate it when clothes mysteriously shrink. I love that dress. Why didn’t I just wear it more.
What was I waiting for? An invitation to high tea? Dinner with George Clooney?

We save all our good books for summer, for the flight and vacation we never take.
That fate has also befallen many a bikini. I’ve given away several with the tags still on.
We save the “good coffee” for the weekend. 
The “good dishes” for……never.
We save being happy until we have more zeros in our bank accounts, and less on our bathroom scales.
We save the good bottle of wine for a special occasion, the champagne for a celebration.
We save good towels for company, tax refunds to pay bills and compliments for birthday cards.
We gotta stop doing this!

I’ll never forget this story. My friend’s Uncle Saul finally retired. After 47 years at the same job, he was anxious to start his life. He was an avid golfer and an aspiring photographer. After he booked a trip to Scotland, he splurged on expensive new clubs and a brand new fancy camera, complete with all the lenses he would never let himself afford. Yep, you know where this is headed. Uncle Saul died in his bowl of Wheaties, three weeks before his trip. When my friend went to clean out the apartment, she was overwhelmed with sadness. Among the piles of unread books and un-opened film, were his spiffy new golf clubs and his never been used camera in its fitted shoulder bag. On the desk were the plane tickets. He died with 1.5 million dollars in the bank. Why? He was 78. He waited too long to start his life.
That marked me. I had to make some changes.

My own way of living before I die, started right away.
Being in the estate business for so long, I have collected a couple of mismatched sets of silver flatware. Okay; I have enough to set a dinner party at Downton Abbey. Then my husband came along with some of his mother’s.
One day after using it all for a holiday dinner, I was carefully washing and drying it by hand, as you must do, before I could return it to its special felt lined chest.
As I admired the intricacy of the design and the substantial weight of the knife in my hand, I said: “Fuck it.” Probably out loud. “I’m going to use these every day.”
I ordered the special felt that keeps them from tarnishing and lined the silverware drawer. Now for almost fifteen years, we have used that beautiful silver for every meal. Even pizza. When I use it, I feel special and that’s the point.
It does demand to be treated like Royalty. It can’t go in the dishwasher and truth be told, it does tarnish. It’s a commitment. The tips of the forks tines are always black. It will never be shiny bright like stainless. I like that. I’m sure it horrifies some people. 
I do cringe every time I tighten screws with it, loosen lids, open packages and pry stuff apart. 
It’s living a 21st century life. My life.
I refuse to save it for later.

Tell me, are you saving your life for later? Or have you started to use the good towels? I’d love to hear your story.

Xox

Seeing Things With REAL EYES

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REALIZE
re·al·ize
ˈrē(ə)ˌlīz/
verb
1. become fully aware of (something) as a fact; understand clearly.
“he realized his mistake at once”
synonyms: register, perceive, discern, be/become aware of (the fact that), be/become conscious of (the fact that)

I have recently, like in the last few days, fallen madly in LOVE with the word realize. Because I just gained a deeper understanding of its meaning.
When you have a realization, you suddenly see that thing with REAL EYES.
Hence the phrase: Oh, I see.
Holy mother of God, I think the top of my head just blew off.
How has this escaped me until this very week?

This experience is similar to my optician working his magic and professionally cleaning my glasses AND discovering I had an astigmatism in BOTH eyes thus changing the prescription on my contact lenses. In both instances, although I perceived my vision as clear, it was as if a dense fog had lifted and my eye sight had gone High Definition. I saw everything differently.
I’m no longer allowed to look up close, at any part of my husband. I can see things too well. I see them so clearly that I get the same intense look on my face as that chick on CSI, when she’s examining gory body parts under the microscope.
Holy shit……Oh, I seeeeee.

For all of us from the Oprah Show generation, a realization is an Ah Ha moment.
“My health problems all stem from my inability to make a change” said a friend, over salad. Ah Ha moment. And a life changer. It disrupted a pattern and started a new trajectory.

My sister swears it’s physical. When something really registers, she insists a door creaks open in her forehead, and let’s the light in.
Palm held to forehead slowly opens. Creeeeeeeeak.
I’ve been there. I think I’ve actually heard it.
We’ll be deep in conversation on one of life’s great mysteries like; what’s the deal with chin hair? When all of the sudden her eyes get real big, and her mouth drops open. We don’t even say anything. We both just put our palms to our foreheads and make the creaking noise.
Then we laugh so hard, no sound comes out.

This happens to me ALL the time with spiritual books and CD’s. I re-read the books that call me before bed. Through the winding canyons of Los Angeles, I play CD’s over and over in the zen monastery that is my car.
Because; for the almost 40 years I’ve been doing it, I’ve witnessed something curious. Realization tends to sneak up on me. It doesn’t come when called, or stop and turn around when chased. Realization comes to me when I least expect it, through repetition and a relaxing of the mind.
In a car ripe with dog farts.

I will know the material so well I can practically recite it verbatim. Then one day, my perception will shift. A word or a concept will click. I’ll hear or see it differently.
And I get it. I mean I REALLY get it. I now understand it in a totally new way.
I have a realization. I see it with REAL EYES.
After certain events in my life, after a perceived failure for instance, I re-read a chapter on the subject and wailed my head off, accompanied by big sloppy sobs. The previous ten times I had read it……nothing……crickets……it didn’t even register.
Now, I see it with REAL EYES.
As I keep aging, growing and changing, so does my understanding of pretty much everything, as evidenced by this post.

The drawing above is a perfect visual aid for this concept.
How convenient.
At first glance, it’s a young woman. But if you shift your perception, take your time and look deeply, an old crone appears. 
Then, she’s all you see. She’s real. The easy, first glance girl disappears.
The crone’s been there all along, but if you didn’t take the time for a second look, you’d have missed her……..Oh, I see.
Did I just hear the sound of a hundred doors creaking open?

I’d love to hear about any Ah Ha’s you’ve had recently. Something you suddenly saw with REAl EYES. Tell me about them in in the comments below.

Xox

Put Down The Crap Sandwich

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Words to live by. Happy Sunday!

Xox

Feel Some Pride On The Inside

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When Was The Last Time You Felt Proud of Yourself?

“If I weren’t too proud, I’d boast of my exaggerated opinion of myself.”
― Bauvard, Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic

Sounds narcissistic right? I can remember in my early 30’s a spiritual teacher advised me to do something wayyyyy out of my comfort zone.
“The accomplishment of this task will make you feel proud of yourself, and you haven’t felt that since you were a child. It will do you some good.”
Afterword; I did feel proud. It did do me some good and I liked the feeling.
We do feel it as children until it’s ridiculed out of us. That’s a freaking shame.
I get it. It is a tightrope act and it’s not supported AT ALL by society. On the contrary, we are pushed to accomplish Herculean feats in our lives. Balancing the demands of family, career and the feeding of our souls, all without displaying one iota of self satisfaction.

Pride in yourself, or a sense of satisfaction, goes hand in hand with having self esteem. You should pat yourselves on the back if you get something right.
It’s a f#* king miracle that we get any of it right. But be warned: If you go too far, then you are acting proud or arrogant. I’m sorry, but that is a load of old, outdated, stinky BS.

The old maxim “Pride comes before a fall” plays on the fact that when you are proud of what you have, you are also at risk: having something means you have something to lose.
I guess they meant friends.

It’s totally acceptable to be “proud parents”or “proud of the graduate.”
That’s sad, because it just reinforces getting validation of yourself….from the outside.
God forbid you feel some pride on the inside. I like that. It rhymes.
I think we should tweet that: Feel some pride on the inside!

I’m a big proponent of feeling proud of yourself. I highly recommend it.
I give you all permission, just like that teacher gave me.
Just be quiet about it lest someone turn you in to the “Who do you think you are” police.
You can tell me….. I’ll give you props.
Here, I’ll share some of mine first, to walk the talk. Try not to judge.

I’m often the proudest of myself when I do something I don’t want to do, or complete a task that I couldn’t even pay somebody to do, it’s so hellacious.
I whooped and hollered with pride, while dancing and giving myself a high five after navigating the labyrinth of automated prompts and reaching a human being, during my tech problems last week. I also took pride in that fact that there had been minimal cursing……..on my part.

I feel proud after I get my ass to the gym most days. That’s epic for me.

I just helped someone anonymously. Not just me, there were a bunch of us. That person will never know who came to her aid and it still feels good. So, that good feeling, that warmth you feel; it’s some of the liquid love that your heart releases AND I’m gonna go out on a limb and name the other part of it.
Pride. There. I said it.

I was recently typecast as that drunken bitch, Miss Hannigan in a small production of Annie and I’m proud. I’m proud that at 56 I can still tackle all the physicality, singing, dancing and rehearsals required. I’m also proud of my complete lack of vanity displayed in this role (see above).
It’s okay to feel proud when you’re courageously unselfconscious. 
I give us all permission.

I feel some pride every day when I hit “post” for this blog. Writing something daily is a huge commitment and one I do not take lightly. Consistency breeds familiarity, and it’s important to me that you know who I am. Warts, boa and all. Authenticity is the new currency in my life.
I have pride in this work, and the fact that it touches people.
I do do a daily, sometimes hourly Ego check. I make sure my hats still fit and that my maniacal laugh is under control.

There’s other stuff, I’m sure, but I don’t want to get pushed off the tightrope into the rocks below. God forbid.

Let’s start a new movement, shall we? Where we foster good healthy self esteem and support self pride. Where we don’t sneer at the occasional “pat yourself on the back” or the “self five”, as I like to refer to it. Let’s all Feel some pride on the inside!
Don’t panic, we will continue to remain ever vigilant in our efforts to not go overboard and ruin it for everybody.
…Donald Trump.

What have you done lately that made you proud of yourself? It’s okay, you can tell me, no one will know. It’ll be our secret. Then I can give you a “virtual five.” I’d love to hear about in the comments 😉

Xox

Leave The Chrysalis Alone

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“I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary, however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root, pati, which means “to endure.” Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It’s a vibrant, contemplative work. It means descending into self, into God, into the deeper labyrinths of prayer. It involves listening to disinherited voices within, facing the wounded holes in the soul, the denied and undiscovered, the places one lives false. It means struggling with the vision of who we really are in God and molding the courage to live that vision.”
~Sue Monk Kidd~

Sue Monk Kidd was on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday a couple of weeks ago. I’ve loved her for almost 25 years.

Her most famous book is “The Secret Life of Bees”, but I became familiar with her after reading her spiritual memoir “When The Heart Waits” in 1990. That was a time when not too many people were brave enough to write about their spiritual journey of transformation. My copy is water stained from reading in the bath, highlighted with a yellow marker, has my insights written in the margins and is dog-eared almost beyond recognition. I ate it up with a spoon when she wrote that waiting for your purpose is a sacred endeavor.

Waiting is not always passive. It can be a passageway from one way of being to another. She gave me permission to wait for the reveal.

These days, even more so than 25 years ago, waiting, being still, has gotten a bad rap. Inactivity is THE cardinal sin of the 21st century.

She used the analogy of the caterpillar in the chrysalis. If you poke a hole to check on its progress, the butterfly’s wings will be underdeveloped, and it will be unable to fly. The same thing happens if you try to help it break through. Every second, every step of the process is critically important to the transformation…and the survival of the butterfly.

Just let that one sink in……All the way down to your toes.

This quote from “When The Heart Waits” is one of my favorites.
I need to add it to the list.

“When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the Spirit laughs for what it has found” 

That makes my heart stop every time.

When Sue had her chat with O, she relayed an insight she had around 50.
She realized she had been a seeker all of her 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. In that respect we are kindred souls. But recently she’d admonished herself.

Enough seeking, she needed to “find” something.

It was time to become A Finder.

That just about made my head explode. Now I get it.
That’s what happens in your 50’s. The energy you expended as a seeker is replaced with the energy of “finding” and sharing. You’ve sought, delved and explored. You’ve attend countless retreats, seminars, conferences and sweat lodges. You’ve discovered along the way you DID get some answers. You have found nuggets of truth. Things you KNOW FOR SURE. All your seeking has borne fruit. That fruit is deliciously ripe and ready to share.

It’s the reason I write this blog.
I used to spend hour upon hour, day after day reading everything spiritual I could get my hands on. At one time I had over three hundred spiritual and self-help books. I have given half of them away.
Now I spend hours writing what I’ve learned.

I will always be on a journey of asking WHY? I’m hard-wired for it. But I’m also hard-wired to share anything and everything I know.
THAT is the payoff, the pay-it-forward of the seeker. We get to say: Hey, you wanna know what helped me? Have you read this or seen that?

I feel like in our second acts we are now Finders.
Things start to make some sense. Not everything, I still can’t wrap my brain around vows of chastity and silence.
What I HAVE found is that I am much more willing to wait and see how things work out.
I’m not perfect, some days I still want to see the progress inside the chrysalis.
I am forever a work in progress. I will always be asking questions. But I’m embracing my inner Finder.

I feel like she has a lot to share.

Tell me what you know about waiting. How comfortable are you with being passively passionate or passionately passive? Lol.

Xox

Heaven Is For Real, But Sometimes They Send You Back

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We first met on December 18, 2000. Then he died. On this, the nineteenth anniversary of our first blind date here’s a recounting of just what happened from back in 2014. This is our very personal Christmas miracle.


“Life is a dream walking. Death is going home.” – Chinese proverb

He died for a minute and 56 seconds. His heart stopped and his breathing ceased. I’d just say 2 minutes, but hospitals and doctors are exact. They are to-the-second precise. So, when he tells the tale; he died for a minute and 56 seconds, because four seconds more would be way too long.
Just writing this makes my eyes well up.

He…is my husband.

In December of 2000 he contracted bacterial spinal meningitis on an airplane. Or as I now call them, flying, metallic, germ delivery systems.
He’s a car guy, often referred to as a gear head. That second week of December he took a one-way flight from LA to Houston to look at a car, which he then purchased and drove back with a buddy. Trouble was, he boarded that flight with a bad head cold. It was mid-December, everyone’s sick with something around the holidays. Right?
As luck would have it, that was just the route an opportunistic virus used to infect him. The meningitis rode in, like a sinister villain in a spaghetti western, on the back of streptococcus pneumonia. Once the pneumonia had chewed up his lungs, to the point where they resembled snowflakes, all the meningitis had to do was dismount, and stroll on in.

Meningitis is a jerk.

He’s a fragile, lazy, coward of a virus. If everything isn’t just so, he takes his badass self and leaves town. But pneumonia is efficient and the path had been prepared, so he set up camp in my husband’s lungs.

Three days after he got back to LA, as pneumonia went about doing its dirty work, he felt pretty lousy. Meanwhile, meningitis was still lurking in the shadows. He felt lethargic. By then he was probably running a fever, but men don’t check that stuff. He just got out of bed, showered and dressed. He had plans that night.
He had arranged a blind date with someone who was recommended by a friend’s girlfriend. She sounded…intriguing. And she had big boobs. Yep, he was just that shallow.

That someone was me.

The blind date story is epic and meant for another day. We got married nine months later, so I’m gonna say it went pretty well.

I’ve always been fascinated by near-death experiences (NDE’s.) Now I live with someone who’s had one and he’d be the first to tell you, it profoundly changed him, it set him free.

Two days after our first date, he drove the new car up to San Jose, with his dog, to celebrate the Christmas holidays with his younger brother, his wife and their two young kids.
He was driving five hours to cook the Christmas bird.

If a turkey is involved you drop everything and call my husband. He is the turkey Whisperer. THE turkey cooker extraordinaire. The next morning he did all the prep, in between long stints in bed. He was trashed, feeling sicker with each passing hour and had developed the headache from hell. Now, he figured, he had a hell of a bad flu bug.

I will remind you, my husband is a BIG guy. He’s 6’3″ 230 lbs of big handsome, and that helped save his life.
When he makes a promise, he keeps it. It’s one of the things I admire about him, and damn it, he cooked that turkey. From his sickbed, even though he never had a bite.

The next day he got out of bed once and collapsed. The paramedics were called and he was rushed to a local teaching hospital that was affiliated with Stanford.

During transport, the paramedics called him Ralph. “Stay with us Ralph. Any pain Ralph?” My husband’s name is Raphael. I’ve been told they do that to piss you off and keep you conscious and talking. It worked. “My name is Raphael” he kept correcting them.
Genius.
But it was short-lived.
His brother told the doctor all he knew, that Raphael had complained of a terrible headache and the flu. He used to have migraines but this was different. The ER was about to send him home with migraine meds, but his brother refused. He’d never seen Raphael that ill. HE really saved his brother’s life.

Just about that time, it ceased to matter. His blood test came back with an astronomical white cell count, and he had gone into a coma. Now suspecting meningitis, they did a spinal tap. So normally our spinal fluid is clear and under pressure. Normal is: 70 – 180 mm H20, his reading was over 400 and the fluid was thick and black, like oil. As the story goes, it was right about this point in the evening where he flat-lined. After they brought him back, they wrote TERMINAL on his chart, pumped him full of morphine and wheeled him into a room to die.

It was during this time that Raphael remembers a foggy, all-white environment, no walls, ceiling or floor. He could see all sides at once. The best thing was, he was out of pain, his head no longer hurt.

He was looking at three beds which contained three Raphael’s.

The Raphael on the right was saying: I am suffering, why would I stay in this bed, I want to go where it’s peaceful. Where there’s no pain. Pointing at a bright white tunnel.
He represented the physical self.

The Raphael in the bed on the left said: Go ahead and go! Quit complaining. That’s fine, it really affects no one except those that are left behind. He represented the intellectual self.

The Raphael in the middle was the observer. He just listened to the two others arguing. He just WAS. No attachment. He represented the soul.

That white tunnel was the path home. It was a silent, pain-free, deliciously peaceful place where he wanted to stay forever.
But they started his heart and he came back.

That night a female doctor very much like Dr. House from TV, took a look at his chart. She specialized in ONLY terminal cases. Since it was a teaching hospital, she was allowed to literally throw everything in her extensive medical arsenal at these patients, searching for a cure. It was equal parts medicine, alchemy, and wishful thinking. She did everything she could, then she just handed it over to a higher power. Her success rate was 3%. I know, calm down, they were terminal after all.

It was the fight of his life and he was on the ropes. At that point, his size was the only thing saving him.

By that time the hospital had reported their diagnosis of bacterial meningitis to the CDC. Thirteen people from his flight to Houston had come down with it, four had died. Raphael’s brother was told to get his whole young family tested. It was a stressful, scary time.

I remember hearing it on the news. It struck me because one of the women who died was my age at the time, 43. Shit. I have to get on a plane in five days, I worried.

Since he was away, I had no idea he was even sick. We only had our one blind date, with a promise of a second on December 28th. He never showed. I called twice, which was only mildly desperate, and both times his cellphone went right to message. So I left for New Year’s Eve in Miami. When I didn’t hear from him by the end of the first week of January I told my friends, “He better be abducted by aliens or dead by the side of the road, because those are the only two excuses I’ll accept.”

Yikes! We still laugh about that.

His medical file is as thick as a phone book with the lists of drugs and scans his doctor administered that first night. There is even a straight jacket included. She did say he put up a hell of a fight to live. Apparently so.
By the middle of the second day of her treatment, he was slightly improved. She determined he would live, but he’d be a vegetable from the cerebral fluid pressure and its horrible condition.
No brain could never recover from that.

His family, his siblings, who were all now at the hospital, looked at each other to determine who would care for him and for how many months.

A couple of days later, with the determined doctor holding one hand, one of his sisters holding the other, he woke up. Just like that.

Startled, the doctor shooed everyone out of the room and started asking him questions, which he answered…perfectly…in detail. Not just, What’s your name? But since he’s an architect, and French, she quizzed him on the architectural intricacies of the Pompidou Centre, even speaking French with him. It was evident he could see her, he could hear her, and he was still his whip-smart self. THAT she could never explain. She considered him a miracle. Everyone at the hospital did. Honestly.

Finally, he asked what day it was. When he found out it was January, he said: I have to call Janet. For those standing around him, some doubt set in, because no one had heard of any Janet. They thought he had an imaginary friend. Uh oh, brain damage.

Nope, apparently, infatuation survives near death. I love that part of the story. It’s like a movie.

He remembers dying as easy, with nothing to fear.
He recalls that he had a decision to make, and either way everything was going to be okay.
Afterword, all the outpouring of love, together with the morphine, broke open his heart—and he was a changed man.

Luckily, he decided to stay and give me a second date, and for that, I am forever grateful.

Happy nineteen years baby! I love you.

Carry on,
Xox

Restoring Order In Chaos

image

Last week I wrote about revisiting past traumas for healing.
http://www.theobserversvoice.com/?p=2345
That’s been working out well. The puppy is her demon self again.

This week has been about revisiting chaos…and finding, or better yet, restoring order.
At least I’m trying. And to be fair I’ve succeeded in several endeavors.
One of them has NOT been this blog.
Holy shit on a cracker; the transfer of this blog to a different host, and the cosmetic changes were supposed to appear overnight, while most of us slept; like the Easter bunny. Sorry Thailand.
But they have not and for that I’m sorry. One email read: it was like my parents moved and forgot to tell me! Ouch. I am so sorry…….cupcake?
In hindsight, this was probably not the week to try this. Lesson learned.
Remember the post about just accepting “what is”?
Yeah…trying to practice what I preach.
Just bear with me, don’t jump ship and be a fair weather follower.

Nevertheless…
I am known for being pretty darn organized. Not like my sister organized, but close.
Martha Stewart kneels at my sister’s feet in deference.
There is a black file cabinet, in the back office that is in a perpetual state of organized chaos. You know, like that drawer in the kitchen.
There has been some denial disguised as paperwork, that has been screaming for my attention, and it finally received it this week. You know that sinking feeling as you walk by that shit? I’m determined to un-sink my life right now.
I blame this freaky energy.
Hot pink Post It’s are like 911, top priority, PAY ATTENTION TO ME NOW, don’t keep walking; in my system.
One folder that has a big hot pink Post It on it, is labeled Domaine Names.
That folder is filthy dirty and all curled in on itself, like a dead spider, after being salvaged from the water of my store’s flood. On the outside of the folder, barely legible, are all the account passwords and the nuclear codes.
I have been receiving emails from Go Daddy about the domaine names expiring for weeks. Each one escalates its urgency. Large fees are mentioned, automatic renewal, blah, blah. I don’t want to renew. Go online, right? Trouble is; I can hardly read the passwords, and they don’t work.
Chaos.
This is going to require phone time. With an automated system. I’d rather have needles stuck in my eye, so I’ve just walked by it…for a looooong time. Today I called and after giving my social, my tax ID number, my SAT scores and my bra size, I was transferred directly to Tad. His condescension was only exceed by Jeffrey’s this morning at my Web hosting provider, so I’m used to it. It’s like breathing air to me now, just part of life. The painful experience was over in half a second, like eyebrow waxing; aided by the fact that the credit card on account had expired. Why didn’t they just say that in an email?
Another end to THAT story.
I’m going to make a ceremony out of shredding that file.
I do that in life with things that annoy me. When I no longer required birth control, I took my diaphram out in the backyard, poked tens of holes in it with a sparkler, and lit it on fire. We have pictures.

Literally half of the top drawer of that large file cabinet is devoted to stock accounts, or should I say PAST stock accounts. I was very active in the stock market in the 90’s and it helped me buy my house. Thankfully, I was out of the market before this latest crash. I get statements from ETrade every month, which I never open…but I file them, as I have since 1995.
What I did do in August of 2001 was to create a custodial account for my nephew, who was 5 at the time. I bought him a few shares of Disney and Krispy Kreme, kid’s stuff. A month later was 911 and I remember looking at a statement and the account had lost more than half it’s value.
The next time I opened a statement before yesterday was 2008 and it looked bleak.
So, I’d just file them away, unopened. Yesterday, walking back to the chaos of the abyss, it dawned on me that he’s about to turn 18 in two weeks. In California, at 18 he can legally take possession of that money. He’s also graduating high school, and off to college in the fall. I opened the statement and holy shit, there’s some real money in that account now. I got on the phone with Hank at ETrade (passwords were obsolete from lack of use) and they’re sending a check. I toyed with the idea of just transferring the account to him instead of a check, but….he’s 18. That’s the difference between getting a polite “Thank you” and a hug. I’m going for the hug. There was also a windfall of $15 left in one of the old stock accounts, so yipeeeee, I’m rich! Drinks all around!

The ending of both of those past experiences makes me SO freaking happy.
I can crumple up that hot pink Post It, shred that file and take great pleasure in putting another nail in the coffin of my dearly departed Atik.
And that little stock account that could? Hell, it actually produced some money and my brain cells fired to remind me, all at the perfect time.

It’s been a productive week so far.
How about you?
I’d love to hear some chaos restoring stories.
Is this energy pushing you to put things in order?
Tell me about it below.

Xox

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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